I'm English, but now I live in rural Missouri - the "Heartland", that odd part of the coutnry where they can vote straight-ticket Democrat and Republican for President. The place where they can, with a straight face, say they won't put a "n****r" in the White House. The place where hunting is a way of life, and the Second Amendment means armor-piercing bullets to take on those particularly nasty White-Tailed deer.
I've been here five years now. In that time, I've gone from "City Boy" (their words) to "Good Ol' Boy" (within limits).
Each Saturday, I help Uncle Ron butcher a dozen rabbits, which he sells so he can buy his diabetes medication. Each afternoon, I lug 200lbs of chicken feed to my mother-in-law's so she can feed the chickens that provide us with eggs and meat to save on grocery prices.
My wife is a nurse, working for a company that allows her to be her own mother's terminal care nurse. No-one in this family (except for my wife, who is a registered Democrat) have voted for a Democratic President - Ever. Not Clinton (despite the fact that he's my mother-in-law's third cousin), not Carter. Not Gore, not Kerry.
At the same time, they will happily mark a check next to the Democratic Gubernatorial candidate (Jay Nixon, MO-Gov, is a cousin too, on the other side of the family!), and for D-Congress, D-Senate, D-SoS, etc, etc...
It's a strange place.
My Sisters-in-Law stated that they would never vote for a "Damn N****r", and my Mother-in-Law said she "loves Sarah Palin".
My wife does not talk politics with them, because she has enough stress in her life; until now.
Her job pays just above minimum wage. With her qualifications, my wife could be earning $60K in a hospital, but she works 12 hours a day, with no benefits, no vacations, no healthcare, because she refuses to let her mother die in the company of strangers.
And tomorrow, she will take 2 hours off work, at the risk of being found out and fired (yes - FIRED) to ferry her mother, sister and uncle to the polling station.
And they will all vote for Barack Obama.
This is the power of the man. This is Obama's greatest strength. I have seen it work every day since before he won the nomination, the building excitement, the sense of hope, the realization that something greater than us is about to happen, paradoxically because of us. We are the agens of change, and by simply standing her ground, explaining our situation - and theirs - to her family patiently, carefully, compassionately, she has succeeded in getting a half-dozen votes in Missouri for Obama.
It may not be much. It may not be enough, in rural Missouri, where a man can look you in the eye and use the N-word without blinking, but it's a triumph. It's our triumph, we made it, we share it, and we will make this happen.
And tomorrow night, or Wednesday morning, there will be no celebration, no cheers; if Barack Obama wins the presidency, Uncle Ron will still need to butcher rabbits to buy his insulin, and my mother-in-law will still need to raise chickens so she can afford eggs and meat.
But there will be a change, a new sense of hope, something they don't talk about much in this neck of the woods. There will be a gleam in the eye, and my Uncle Ron will pause after cutting the stringer on the third or fourth rabbit, and he'll say with a tiny smile;
"We did it."
And he'll be right.